At 14:34 97/08/20, John Hughes wrote:
>Standard Haskell
>...there was a lively discussion at the Haskell
>Workshop in Amsterdam this year about the future of the language. To
>summarise, despite the useful extensions in versions 1.3 and 1.4, many people
>feel quite serious concern about the recent development of the language.
Here are some questions:
>* The definition has been changing too often, making it hard for students,
> teachers, and other users to keep up. Anyone making a big investment in
> Haskell needs to know the language will be stable.
If now the language should be standardized, why not make it an ISO/ANSI
standard?
>In response, it was proposed that Haskell be fixed --- permanently. The fixed
>language will be called `Standard Haskell', and so there will be no Haskell
>1.5, 1.6, etc.
Is it not possible to make the versions upwards compatible, so that
Haskell 1.4 code somehow can be run on Haskell 1.5? Does "being stable"
need to mean unchangeable?
>* The language has become more complex, making it difficult for beginners to
> master, and thereby less suitable for teaching.
It seems me that this increased complexity is the result of that people
start to find the language useful. An idea to handle this might be to opt
for a more condensed kernel, based on logically clean principles (a good
theory); around this, more special structures are being developed. The
trademark of the discussions in this group, has been the absence of
attempting to find such a structured design (meaning that one would rather
discuss how to add some nice new features).
Standardizing a language tends to make it obsolete, due to lack of
creativity. Perhaps it is time to start discussing the successor of Haskell
then.
Hans Aberg
* AMS member: Listing <http://www.ams.org/cml/>
* Email: Hans Aberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
